


Sure Movin' Down the Line

by circ_bamboo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, F/M, Gen, Latina Maria Hill, Male Friendship, Race-related themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2596490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Wilson needs his wings fixed. Steve Rogers thinks he knows a guy who can do that, but as it turns out, Tony Stark didn't make the wings. He knows who did, though: T'Challa, the king of Wakanda and the genius behind the Wakandan Design Group. Sam, along with Rhodey and Maria Hill, goes to London to meet T'Challa . . . where unexpected dangers await them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sure Movin' Down the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Marvel Big Bang. Thanks to feelslikefire for beta work, and wundagore_widow for arting!
> 
> (Link to art forthcoming.)

_Georgetown Library, 2nd floor conference room, 8:00pm_

The text came from a number Sam didn't recognize--and neither did his phone--but before he could stick the number into Google to see if it could help, Steve came into Sam's kitchen, towel still around his neck.

"Natasha just texted me," he said. "Did you get it too?"

"Invitation to a meeting at the library tonight?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "Good. She must have some information for us."

"I wasn't expecting to see her so soon," Sam said as he turned back to the cabinet and took out a bag of bagels. "How many do you want?"

"Uh, three?"

He sounded sheepish, and Sam turned to him and frowned. "Dude, eat what you need to. Don't give me that."

"Yeah, all right," Steve said, eyes flicking away. "Four, then. She's got all sorts of contacts that I don't even think we know ten percent of."

"Yeah," Sam said, grabbing a serrated knife out of the block and cutting the bagels in half before stuffing the first four halves into his toaster. "Well, we'll find out tonight."

\--

But Natasha wasn't in the conference room when they got there. They’d dressed in quasi-undercover wear in preparation; Sam had on his favorite sunglasses and a polo shirt he hadn’t worn in months. Steve was wearing that stupid hoodie and baseball cap combination that Sam privately thought made him more conspicuous, not less, but hey, he wasn't in charge of Steve's wardrobe. "How long should we wait for her?" Sam asked.

Steve didn’t answer immediately; he was too busy frowning at the wall, where there was a small smudge next to the dark wood of the window. It was a surprisingly nice conference room, for a public library, though not terribly private, with a bank of windows looking into the main room full of desks. "We shouldn’t," Steve said. "I think she probably just left something here for us."

"Okay," Sam said. He really should have expected that. "Where?"

"Don't know yet," Steve said. He started running his fingers around the frame of the window.

Sam turned to look back out at the library floor. It was late enough that pretty much nobody was out there, and the lone student at a desk appeared to be about two-thirds asleep. He shrugged, and dropped to the floor to look under the table.

"Well, what do you know," he said. There was a manila envelope taped to the underside of the desk. He pulled it off and crawled out from under the table. "I think I found it."

"She taped it to the underside of the desk?"

"Yeah, I know," Sam said. "Pretty damn Cold War of her."

Steve snorted. "Well, she is an ex-KGB assassin going after the Winter Soldier."

"She's probably laughing her ass off in the ceiling vents," Sam said in agreement.

Steve looked up and tipped his head to one side. "Nah, not right now. I think she went out the window."

"So do I open the packet here or do we go back to my place first?" Sam asked.

"Here is probably fine." Steve looked out at the rest of the floor; Sam followed his gaze and saw that the student had actually fallen asleep, her face pillowed on a couple of thick books. "Nobody's watching."

"Yeah, true," Sam said, and unwrapped the string from around the little buttons holding the flap of the envelope shut.

Inside was five sheets of paper, four photographs and one note, written in what Sam thought was the Cyrillic alphabet. He didn't read Russian, but apparently Steve could, and he looked up a moment later and said, "Chicago. Buck--The Winter Soldier's been spotted in Chicago, along Lake Michigan."

"Huh," Sam said. He fanned out the photographs--the Winter Soldier literally along the lakeshore, joggers in the background, also wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap, his hair pulled back. The last shot had his face in profile, looking out at Navy Pier. It was weirdly melancholy, rather than menacing.

Sam used his fingertips to slide the photographs across the table towards Steve, and Steve looked away from the note. "Do you want me to translate this word for word?" he asked.

Sam shook his head. "Nah, bro. Is there anything I need to know other than what you said?"

Steve shrugged. "A few locations, some sarcastic commentary." He separated the profile shot out from the other three and sat on the arm of the chair next to him.

He didn't move for more than a minute, and finally Sam cleared his throat. "So, Chicago?" he said. 

Steve tapped his fingers on one of the other photos, his index finger bouncing off the Winter Soldier's nose. It was a little surreal. "Yeah, you coming?" Steve said.

"If that's where the trail leads," Sam said, shrugging as he sat in a chair opposite Steve's. "Kinda wish I had my wings, though."

Steve's mouth twisted to one side, and he took a long breath before saying, "I think I know someone who can help."

Sam frowned. "Help with what? All we have are some odd pieces fished out of the river." When Natasha had come with a box full of what she'd retrieved, he'd strongly considered crying, to be honest.

"Yeah, but this person, there's a chance he even made them in the first place."

Sam frowned a little deeper, trying to remember the manufacturer's name on the wings. Whoever had made them had sourced parts from Stark Industries for the more . . . backpack-y (for lack of a better term) part of the wings, but the majority had been made somewhere overseas. That having been said, though, a light bulb went on in his head. "Oh, yeah, you're friends with Tony Stark. I don't think he made them, though."

"'Friends' might be a little too strong a term but yeah, I've met him, and I'm pretty sure he can help. Also, I don't think he'll turn us into the MPs." Steve grinned a little. "The only military person he can seem to stand is his friend Rhodey."

Sam leaned forward a little. "Colonel James Rhodes, right? Have you met him?"

"Once," Steve said. "He's a good guy. A little shorter than I expected." He held a hand up somewhere near his jaw and then, realizing his mistake, stood and repeated the gesture. "Only a little taller than Tony."

"You're telling me that Iron Man and War Machine are like five-six?"

Steve shrugged. "Maybe more like five-eight?"

Sam almost fell on the floor laughing. When he could finally see again through the tears streaming from his eyes, Steve was looking at him bemusedly. "Yeah, I know, it wasn't that funny," Sam said, "but when you get this impression in your head . . ." He spread his hands.

"Yeah. Well. Wanna go to New York?"

Sam groaned. "If we do that, I'm gonna have to stop by and say hi to my family."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to?"

"No, man, I do, but it's gonna take forever."

"You can always tell them you have to go because Captain America needs your help," Steve suggested.

"You haven't met my mama if you think that's gonna fly." Sam lowered his head into his hands. "I haven't seen them since stuff happened."

"Oof," Steve said. "Well, you know it's going to take more than five minutes for even the great Tony Stark to fix your wings, so I think we'll have more than enough time."

"Are you okay with that?"

"I think you having your wings will be of more help than not." Steve shrugged. "Natasha says he's been there for a week. The worst thing that can happen is that we find out that it is going to take a month for Tony to rebuild your wings, and we leave and go find him without them."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said. "Let's get going. We can leave in the morning."

"I should probably call Tony tonight," Steve said as he packed up the photos and slid them back into the envelope. He sighed, and Sam laughed.

"Look, man, if I thought I had a chance of Tony Stark picking up my call, I'd do it for you."

"He's not that bad," Steve said. "Just . . ." He sighed again. "Talking with him feels like walking through a minefield."

"Because you knew his dad?"

"That's part of it," Steve said. They left the conference room and headed for the stairs; the student had woken up and was watching them avidly as they left. "He talks pretty fast and half of it is references, slang, and jargon I just don't get, and he knows it, and if I don't get it and show frustration, he wins. Don't know what he wins, but he wins it."

"Ah," Sam said. "Yeah, I've known guys like that." _Assholes_ , he almost said, but decided not to.

"But I'm sure he can fix them, or if not, he'll know who can, or something," Steve said.

"I'll take your word for it," Sam said.

It took a half hour or so to get back to Sam's place, and Steve dithered around for another fifteen minutes or so before Sam punched him on the arm and said, "Call him."

"All right, all right," Steve groused, and thumbed open his phone.

Sam tried very hard not to listen in to the conversation, but Steve didn't leave the room, and it was almost impossible.

"Hi, Tony, it's Steve Rogers. Yes, I know you have caller ID; it's just polite . . . Okay. You know what? I don't care. Yes, of course I'm calling for a reason. Do you know anything about the EXO project? Yeah, the wings--you saw them? Yeah. Yeah, he did. We managed to save some parts. Can you fix them? Okay. Yeah, we'll be in town tomorrow. No, we--Tony, that's--Okay." He held the phone out and stared at it for a moment. "Uh. I guess we're staying at Stark Tower."

"That big ugly thing in Midtown?"

"Oh, thank God I'm not the only one who feels that way," Steve said fervently. "Yeah. Well, free beats cheap, unless it's really that terrible. Which it won't be," he said. "At least, not if Pepper's in town."

"Pepper Potts?"

"Yeah. She's great. If only she didn't have such terrible taste in men." Steve sighed theatrically, and Sam laughed.

"Got a thing for redheads, eh?"

"No," Steve said, the protest fairly mild. "I just happen to know two incredibly competent ones.”

Sam chuckled. “It’s true.”

A couple minutes later, Steve said, "You want to go for a run before we leave tomorrow?"

"Probably should." Sam wasn't thinking of his own fitness so much as Steve's mental health when he agreed, and Steve's smile of relief confirmed his decision.

\--

Driving from DC to New York technically only took four hours.

Technically.

Six and a half hours later, Sam pulled the rental car into Stark Tower's underground parking, as directed by some guy named Jarvis over Steve's phone. He considered himself lucky to have made it in that amount of time, and his patience with traffic was worn pretty thin. There was a reason he rarely drove.

"That was impressive," Steve said, after the doors closed behind them and Sam had stopped the car. "That last rant. And I say that having been in the military myself."

"Yeah, well, enlisted," Sam said, jerking a thumb at himself. The car--a regular driver, not a cab--had cut him off, and even though he'd been cut off about a hundred times just in the last two hours, it had hit him wrong.

"Sorry," Steve said.

Sam sighed. "It's not your fault." There was no reason to take it out on Steve, who had been nothing but nice this whole time. He took a couple of deep breaths and got out of the car.

He set his drink on top of the car, but apparently in a bad spot, because it fell, dumping Coke all over his jacket. Then it turned out that something in the backpack of the EXO unit had fallen apart in the trunk, spraying little mechanical bits all over the place. Then the edge of Sam's duffel bag was sticky, because his toothpaste had exploded and soaked through.

In short, it was really a crappy morning, and although it was mostly coincidence, some part of Sam really wanted to blame someone.

“This is all Stark’s fault," Sam was muttering as he dabbed at the corner of his duffel ineffectually with a napkin left over from lunch.

Steve said, very carefully, "I don't think Tony actually had anything to do with this yet. Why don't you bring the duffel bag upstairs as is, and we'll see what he--or, really, Pepper--can do for you."

Sam closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and consciously relaxed every muscle he could from his scalp down to his toes. "Okay, yeah, you're right," he said. “Give me a hand with the wings?”

“Sure. Let's go." He shouldered his own duffel and said, "Or, um, hey, Jarvis, should we just leave the EXO-7 wings in the car?"

Sam looked around, confused; there was no one nearby, but a voice came over a speaker anyway. "Yes, Captain Rogers. Master Stark says he'll come down for them later."

"Okay." Sam slammed the trunk shut, maybe a little too hard, and picked up his own bag. "Who was that?"

"Jarvis. He's--it's? I don't know. Anyway, uh, Tony has an AI sort of . . . I can't explain it." Steve held his hands up. "He's a computer. That's about all I got."

"Okay, sure," Sam said. "Where's the elevator?"

"To your right, Sergeant Wilson."

" _Mister_ Wilson, please," Sam said, gritting his teeth, and he turned in the direction indicated.

"My apologies, Mister Wilson," Jarvis said, his (its?) voice following through different speakers as Sam moved.

The elevator was fast, enough to make even Sam's well-practiced ears pop, and he saw Steve wiggling his jaw as well. When the doors opened, Tony Stark was standing there in jeans and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up on one side; he looked enough like the pictures Sam had seen that he was recognizable, but he also looked . . . human.

Plus it was a faded Metallica t-shirt, his jeans were ripped, and there was a smudge of grease on the side of his face. Sam couldn't have explained why that got rid of the bulk of his frustration with his terrible day, but it did.

"Hi, welcome to Stark Tower, yada yada," Stark said. "How's it going, Capsicle? I'm glad you're out of the hospital. Mr. Wilson, good to meet you."

He held out a hand, and Sam shook it. "Sam."

"Hi, Tony," Steve said, sounding long-suffering.

"So yeah, your rooms are on this level; I'm told I'm supposed to offer to let you 'freshen up' or rest or something." Stark made the air quotes with his fingers, even though they'd been clear from the tone of his voice. "But then you should come to the lab; I'll go get the EXO-7 and we'll see what I can do."

"Hey, man, thanks," Sam said; it was a little stilted, but at least he'd tried.

Stark flapped a hand at him. "You think I haven't been trying to figure out how I can get my hands on them since I saw you on the news? Please." He snorted. "Anyway, there are only two suites on this floor. Do what you want. They're identical." He waved down the hallway. "Come find me in the lab when you're done. I left Rhodey in there and God knows what trouble he'll get into if I don't supervise him."

"I think it's pretty much the opposite, Tony," Steve said, grinning.

"You haven't been around Rhodey much, have you," Stark said darkly, and ducked into the elevator.

"When he says Rhodey," Sam said, words carefully measured, "he means Colonel Rhodes, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," Steve said.

"Colonel Rhodes is here?"

"Sounds like it."

"I don't even know what to say at this point."

"Don't suppose there's much to say. Which suite do you want? Or--you know, let me check something." Steve ducked through a door and came back a minute later. "Yeah. They're three-bedroom, three-bathroom suites. You want to just share one? I don't need half a floor to myself."

"Sure," Sam said. He and Steve had been living in closer quarters in his place in DC. He followed Steve back through the door and into a very--well, he wasn't going to think about it too hard, but it was definitely a rich-person suite, with sharp-edged furniture and granite countertops in the kitchen and lots of stainless steel. Steve pointed him in the direction of the bedrooms, the doors slightly ajar, and Sam picked the one farthest from the door, not for any real reason. He let the door fall shut behind him, dropped his duffel on the floor, walked into the en suite bathroom, and splashed some water on his face.

He looked up in the mirror when he was done wiping his face with one of the super-fluffy white hotel-style towels. The bathroom wasn't that bad; it was probably eight feet square with a natural-stone-tiled shower and glass sliding door, but the vanity was just dark wood with a marble sink, and the toilet looked relatively normal. He was really going to have to get out of his weird mood before he went up to see Tony Fucking Stark, and he almost laughed when he realized the best way to do that.

The bedroom wasn't really that ostentatious, either. The bed had neither a headboard nor a footboard, and everything else in the room was mostly mid-level hotel. He had to ignore the floor-to-ceiling glass windows on one side; they honestly made him more uncomfortable from sightlines than anything else. He threw himself on the bed, on top of the fluffy gray-and-white-striped comforter, pulled out his cell phone, and called his mother.

"Hi, Mama."

"Sam, baby boy, how are you doing?"

"Good, good. I'm in New York right now, meeting with some people."

"What!?" his mama said, and put her hand over the bottom of the phone and hollered, "Sarah! Guess who's in town?"

Ah, apparently his sister was visiting. "It's like a reunion, isn't it."

"Well, it will be when you get your butt over here."

"I can't today, Mama. I told you, I'm meeting with some people."

"About what? Oh, I bet you can't tell me."

"I can't," Sam said. "Well, I can tell you I'm meeting with Tony Stark."

"Tony Stark his own self?"

"Yeah."

"Well, then when are you coming to stay here?"

"I'm not staying with you, Mama, I'm staying with Tony Stark, but I can come see you tomorrow, I think." Tomorrow would be Friday, and Stark couldn't possibly need him that whole time, could he?

"Staying with Tony Stark!"

"Yeah, he insisted on it," he said.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"No, Mama, I'm not. Tony Stark insisted that I stay with him and he put me in this big ole suite with a giant bed and a fancy kitchen."

"What on earth did you do to deserve that? Never mind, of course you deserve a giant bed and a fancy kitchen," she said, a note of pride echoing over the cell connection. "And probably you can't tell me anyway."

"Not yet, no," he said. "Look, I can't talk long and it'll be better in person. I'll call you tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Okay, baby. Have a good rest of the day."

"You too, Mama. I love you."

"Love you too, Sammy."

Well, the good news was that calling his mom had worked; he wasn't in a strange mood anymore. The bad news was that now he felt incredibly guilty for not having visited her already, but that would just have to fester until tomorrow. He rolled off the bed and went to find Steve.

The super soldier was eating, no surprise, although Sam hadn't known there was anything actually _in_ the kitchen. It just looked like bread and peanut butter, nothing fancy, but still.

Steve looked up and waved, his mouth obviously full, when Sam shut the door behind him. "Hey," he said a moment later. "Sorry. Do you want some?"

"No, I'm still good from lunch," Sam said. "I called my mom. I think I have to go see her tomorrow evening."

"Okay," Steve said. "I'm sure Tony won't need you around all day, every day."

"I hope not. When you're done, we should go see him."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam said, and he was pretty sure it was true.

Steve brought a second peanut butter sandwich with him; or, well, as it turned out, he brought his third with him. Sam wondered for a second if he'd been inadvertently starving Steve by only making double his usual amount of food, but figured he really couldn't worry about it now. Of course Steve had a mouthful of peanut butter when the elevator came, and he made helpless gestures at Sam and the ceiling until Jarvis said, "I presume you and Mr. Wilson wish to go see Sir in his lab, Captain Rogers," in long-suffering tones.

"Yes," Sam said.

"Thanks," Steve said as the elevator started moving, and then immediately took another bite, which left him stuck to himself when the elevator reached its destination. The doors opened up to a lab, all sparkling blue glass and--holograms? Were those holograms? Okay.

There was music playing, but it was quiet, some sort of jazz; a moment later the trumpet part came in and Sam recognized it as Miles Davis. That didn't really fit with his mental image of Tony Stark, and he frowned.

"Oh, hey, Cap, you made it," Stark said; he was off to one side, out of Sam's original line of sight. "Are you eating a peanut butter sandwich without anything to drink? Dummy, we have something drinkable around here, don't we? Non-alcoholic? Drinkable by humans, I mean."

A robot arm on a wheeled base made a clicky noise and went to the corner. Sam watched it go, and when he looked back at Stark, the other man was grinning at him. "That's Dummy, D-U-M-hyphen-E. Built him when I was a kid. He's almost useful on alternate Thursdays. How are you, Sam? I have your wings here." He indicated what looked like a pile of rubble on the table.

DUM-E returned with a glass full of water and handed it to Steve, who sniffed it carefully before taking a sip.

"Probably a good idea," Stark said ruefully. "Is it water?"

"Yeah," Steve said.

"Good. Anyway, back to the wings. I didn't make them, but I know who did." Stark sighed. "Come here, look at this."

Sam came over and looked where Stark was pointing, at a logo with the letters WDG intertwined and a little black cat head. "Yeah?"

"The WDG means Wakandan Design Group. The black panther head means that the designer was T'Challa himself."

Sam knew that name. "The king of Wakanda designed my wings himself?"

"Yeah." Stark sighed again.

"Don't mind him; he's just pissed because King T'Challa is smarter than he is." A new voice came out from behind them, and Sam turned to see, _oh_ , yeah, that was Colonel Rhodes. He straightened and started to raise his hand, but Colonel Rhodes said, "At ease, Wilson, you're retired, and Steve, I don't even know what your current status is but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be saluting me."

"Ish a shign of reshpec'," Steve said, and then gulped down more of his water.

"What he said, sir," Sam said. He was still standing straight and tall, which made it even more obvious when Rhodes came up and set down what he was holding that Sam had three or four inches on the guy. He managed not to laugh, but just barely.

"Here," Rhodes said to Stark. "Fresh coffee, and the metric wrenches you left upstairs."

"T'Challa is not smarter than I am," Stark said mutinously, and took the wrench set.

"Two words: shadow physics."

"Hey, I had to discover how to synthesize vibranium on my _own_ ," Stark said. "I couldn't, you know, start out with the stuff already existing and then go on from there."

"I'm sorry, who figured out the structure of vibranium?" Rhodes said.

"With a little help from previous generations, okay, yes," Stark said, and turned on his heel and stalked over to a different desk in a huff.

"Sam Wilson," Colonel Rhodes said, turning to Sam and holding out a hand. "Good to meet you. I saw the test footage of you in the EXO-7 gear from a few years ago. Excellent flying. I couldn't imagine doing something like that."

"With all due respect, sir," Sam said, shaking his hand, "I'm pretty sure that saving the president trumps hurling myself around without a suit."

"Now if only you'd saved the country while hurling yourself around without a suit--oh, wait, you _did_ that," Rhodes said. "And don't call me 'sir.' Rhodey will do. Or Jim, if you prefer."

Sam wasn't normally that impressed by celebrities; Tony Stark over there was just another overcaffeinated white dude with too much shit, and Captain America, as it turned out, was just another soldier back from a long war. But Colonel Rhodes had just told him to call him ‘Rhodey,' and he had _no_ idea how to respond.

"I'll let you reboot," Col-- _Rhodey_ said, and stepped away with a grin.

Sam shook his head and glanced over at Steve. "You need another sandwich?"

"I'm good," Steve said, grinning; he held the glass out to DUM-E, who took it back gently and wheeled itself over to the sink.

Sam leaned over to look at his wings, and Stark appeared as if summoned. "Yeah, they're basically a pile of raw material at this point," he said.

"Can you fix them?"

"Probably," Stark said. "But, and as much as it pains me to say this, I really shouldn't."

"So I don't get my wings back." Sam's heart sank, and he really wasn't anticipating how much that hurt.

"I didn't say that," Stark said. "I think you need to go back to the original designer to get them fixed."

"The king of goddamn Wakanda?" Sam said. "What makes you think he'll speak to me?"

"Well, he probably would since you have his _wings_ ," Tony said, "but more importantly, I know him. Sort of. We've met a couple times."

"So you can put me into contact with him?" Sam said.

"In order to keep from causing an international incident, I'm going to let the CEO of Stark Industries do so," Stark said. "If you're lucky, I might even let you take along a national hero."

"Excuse you, I am my own national hero," Sam said, "and I got another one right there." He jerked a thumb at Steve.

"Yeah, I meant Rhodey," Stark said. "Since he is, you know, an aeronautical engineer, I thought he might be more useful than a super soldier."

"Oh," Sam said, deflating.

"So you weren't gonna _ask me politely_ to go along just because I'm black?" Rhodey said.

"No, why would I do that?" Stark said, sounding genuinely confused.

Sam met Rhodey's eyes around Stark's head and gave a short nod of understanding.

"You're, what, the third-best aeronautical engineer I know," Stark was saying.

"That's almost a compliment," Rhodey said.

Sam was sure that Stark would have a response for that, but the elevator dinged and opened, revealing Maria Hill. "Stark, you need to--oh, you have visitors."

"Yes, I have visitors," Stark said. "So I can't do whatever it is you want me to do."

"Hi, Maria," Steve said.

"Hey, Maria," Sam said. "How's Stark treating you?"

"Hi, Steve, Sam. I've only had to see him two or three times since I started, so just fine." She smiled at them. "How are you?"

"I'm good," Sam said. "Gettin' my wings fixed."

"Nice," Maria said. "Stark, you need to sign off on this upgrade to the security system, which is the one we discussed last week."

"You mean with the--" Stark made some sort of weird gesture in the air.

"Yes, that one."

"Okay, I can do that."

Maria set the folder she was holding down on the counter in front of Stark and he picked it up, which seemed a little weird to Sam, but hey, 'eccentric' pretty much went along with 'billionaire.' "So Tony's going to fix your wings?"

"No," Sam said, "but he can get me into contact with the person who can fix them."

"Pepper," Tony corrected. "Pepper can get you into contact with T'Challa. I'm going to stay here and not get involved with that."

"Why not?" Maria asked. "I'd think you'd want a chance to nerd out with King T'Challa."

Did everyone know that the king of Wakanda was an engineering genius other than him? Sam shook his head.

"Tony's just mad because King T'Challa called him out in a paper once," Rhodey said. "Feel free to ignore him."

"My math was not wrong! Just . . . less than perfectly applicable," Stark said. "Hey, while you were busy playing Whack-A-Mole with my ego, I sent a message to Pepper and she said she should be available for about half an hour at three-thirty. Which is . . ."

"Twenty minutes from now, sir," Jarvis said.

"Yeah, that."

Maria's phone, in the pocket of her suit jacket, beeped, and she pulled it out and looked at it. "Guess I'm going to the meeting, too," she said. "In that case, I have to get going, finish up some stuff first. Nice to see you again, Sam, Steve, Rhodey.”

"You too," Steve said, and Sam waved.

"Is she the one whose messages you've been avoiding for the whole morning?" Rhodey said to Stark.

"I don't know; maybe."

"Indeed, Colonel Rhodes," Jarvis said.

"You traitor," Stark said.

"That would be one woman whose messages I would not avoid," Sam said to Steve.

"Yeah, well, she likes _you_ ," Stark said. "I have to go change into something less grease-covered or Pepper will not let me sit down in her office. I'll see you all in about fifteen minutes. Jarvis can tell you where to go." He headed over to the door opposite the elevator.

Rhodey shrugged. "I gotta follow him or he'll somehow get distracted and not make the meeting. Nice to meet you, Sam, and good to see you again, Steve. See you in a few."

"You too," Steve said.

"Nice to meet you, too," Sam said, and bit his tongue, because did he sound too eager? Too pedestrian? Nah, whatever. He turned and headed for the elevator.

Once he and Steve were inside and the doors were closed, he said, "I don't know where we're going."

"Ms. Potts's office is on the thirty-fourth floor, Mr. Wilson," Jarvis said.

"That's good to know, but what I meant was, we've got fifteen minutes before we need to be there. Is there somewhere where we can wait outside her office? Or do you need something else, Steve?"

"I wouldn't mind brushing my teeth," Steve said.

"What, doesn't the super-soldier serum kill bad breath germs?" Sam said, grinning.

"Well, it does, but it doesn't get rid of the bread stuck in my teeth," Steve said, grinning back. "Can you take us to our floor again, Jarvis?"

"Certainly, Captain Rogers."

The elevator whooshed, and they were back on their floor in a few seconds. "I think now I believe you're okay," Steve said, once they were back in the suite. "Am I right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "Got to meet Colonel Rhodes, got to see Maria again, might get to meet the king of Wakanda. You know, all in a day's work."

Steve chuckled. "You'd be surprised. Actually, I'm mostly surprised that Maria hasn't killed Tony yet." He disappeared into his own room, but left the door open.

"He's useful, I gotta admit," Sam said.

Steve came out a couple minutes later, his hair combed flatter. "Ah, that's better. You ready?"

"Hold on, I gotta comb my hair, too, lord knows it's a mess," Sam said, just to make Steve laugh. "Nah, bro, I'm good."

"Okay."

They still ended up about ten minutes early, but Pepper's office had a pretty nice waiting area; her admin stared, wide-eyed, at Steve for about five seconds before she blinked and put her professional face back on. Considering that she was probably in her late fifties or early sixties, Sam was a little amused.

Apparently there was a back door or something to Pepper's office, because Stark and Rhodey were already in there when Pepper herself opened the door to greet them. She was wearing a navy blue skirt suit and heels which put her pretty much the same height as Sam himself, and she was terrifying and almost painfully attractive at exactly the same time. "Hi, Steve, and Sam Wilson, right?" Pepper said as the door closed.

She was smiling, which made it easier for Sam to answer, "Yes, that's me." He put on his best smile, possibly not as good as the one he'd managed the first time he met Natasha, who was scary in the same way, but good enough, because her smile widened and she gestured to the seats near Stark and Rhodey.

"Have a seat," she said. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"I'm fine," Steve said. "Thank you, though." Sam nodded in agreement.

"Hey, you didn't offer us anything to drink," Tony said.

"You're holding a cup of coffee, dear," Pepper said, her tone rich with amusement, and Rhodey chuckled.

Maria came in a moment later and closed the door behind her. "I'm sorry I'm late," she said.

"You aren't," Pepper said. "Everyone else is just early, which is unexpected. I understand, Sam, that you need to get into contact with the king of Wakanda about your wing pack?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess I do." He felt really strange being the point man on this, because there were so many other people in the room who probably would be better with the king of a goddamn country than he would--but he caught Rhodey's eye just briefly, long enough to see Rhodey give him a short nod, and then remembered that he was a _goddamn national hero_ and stepped the fuck up. 

"I need the wings functional in order to continue doing my job. I've consulted with Mr. Stark here and he has recommended going back to the original designer-slash-manufacturer of the EXO-7 pack. He has also informed me that Stark Industries has contacts with Wakanda and offered this meeting so we could discuss the matter."

"Oh, my God, it's Tony, not Mr. Stark," Tony said, but Sam ignored him.

Maria, sitting next to Pepper, raised her eyebrows; she looked surprised, but in a good way, and Sam filed that reaction away for later.

Pepper, on the other hand, straightened a little bit and said, "Excellent, Mr. Wilson. Stark Industries has been doing business with the Wakanda Design Group for a decade now, and I'll put in a request through the usual business channels. I'll also contact the Wakandan embassy in New York on your behalf, if that's okay, in case you need to travel to Wakanda for the repairs or to consult with King T'Challa."

"Thank you," Sam said, and paused. "Um. It's possible that my, uh, possession of the EXO-7 wingpack is, uh, not authorized by the U.S. government?"

"La, la, la," Rhodey said, and Sam turned to see him with his fingers stuck in his ears. 

Stark--Tony--said, "I don't know what you're talking about, Sam. It's completely authorized by the U.S. government." He turned around the tablet he was holding, with a change-of-control document for the wings on the screen. Sam's name was in the correct place and it was signed by a name he didn't recognize, but it all _looked_ perfectly official.

"Well, never mind, then," he said, and Rhodey took his fingers out of his ears, looking relieved.

"Good," Pepper said. "I don't expect it to take more than about forty-eight hours to get a response; in the meantime, I understand you're staying here?"

"I am," Sam said. "We are." He indicated Steve and himself. "Thank you for your hospitality," he added, because his mama would have been mad otherwise.

"You're welcome. If you need anything, Jarvis can help, or can alert one of us." She gestured to herself and Tony.

"Thank you, Ms. Potts," he said.

"You're welcome, Mr. Wilson. And now that we're done with that, I'm going to tell you to call me 'Pepper' and then kick you out and keep Tony for the rest of the half hour." She smiled at him, and Sam would have probably agreed with anything she wanted.

"Oooh, office nookie?" Tony said, standing.

"If by 'nookie' you mean 'forcing you to sign things that you have managed to evade and/or put off for the last month,' then sure, nookie," Pepper said, unruffled. "See you later, Maria, Rhodey, Steve, Sam. Say goodbye to your friends, Tony."

"Dinner later?" Tony said.

"Sure," Steve said with a shrug. Sam nodded, as did Rhodey.

"You too, Maria," Pepper added.

"Why not," Maria said.

The four of them filed out of Pepper's office and into the elevator; the doors were closing when Maria said, "I don't know why I was there."

"If I had to guess," Rhodey said, "it was to give you a heads-up that there's a chance that the king of Wakanda will be visiting Stark Tower. Either that, or Pepper is trying to throw you and Tony into the same room under supervision as often as possible until you stop sniping at each other."

"I'll stop if he stops," Maria shot back, and then sighed. "Okay, no, that's not true."

It was clear that she and Rhodey knew each other and were friends, and Sam found himself oddly jealous, although there was one strange moment when he didn't know who he was jealous of.

Probably both, he decided, as Rhodey patted Maria on the shoulder. "Don't worry. He grows on you, like mold."

"He's a lot easier to be around when he's not switched on," Steve said, and Rhodey nodded.

"That's true," he said.

The elevator stopped at Steve and Sam's floor, and they obediently got off. "Some of us have work to do," Maria said, "but I guess I'll see you at dinner."

"Same. I'm actually here for upgrades on the Iron Patriot armor, so that's sort of like work," Rhodey said, and raised a hand in farewell as the doors closed.

"That was fast," Steve said.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Some pretty impressive speaking you did there."

"You ever go to a board and ask them for more funding for your project?" Sam said. "It's a little different than giving an impromptu patriotic speech over a loudspeaker, but some of the same skills."

Steve gave a bark of laughter, and opened the door to the suite.

They ended up watching a movie until dinner--well, Steve watched a movie and Sam half-napped on the couch. When it was done, Sam stretched, trying to make sure he was actually awake, and then said to Steve, sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees, "Look, man, I'm sorry this is gonna take so long."

Steve frowned. "What do you mean?" he said. "I knew it was going to take at least a couple days."

"Yeah, but now there's international politics involved, and diplomacy, and possibly a trip out of the country."

"Oh," Steve said. "Well, like I said yesterday, the worst thing that can happen is that Bu--the Winter Soldier moves on and we have to go find him somewhere else, but we're better prepared." He shrugged, but it was a small, tight movement.

"Yeah," Sam said. "You wanna talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Steve said.

"Anything."

To his credit, Steve actually thought about it for a moment, or made a good show of looking like he did. "Not really," he said. "But thanks for asking. Maybe later?"

"Sure thing."

There was a minute or so of silence, in which the ending credits music switched to something orchestral, and then Steve said, not unexpectedly, "I know I'm never going to get back the same person from the forties, but Bucky was the, I guess, the Tony to my Rhodey, and I shouldn't be mad that they have an extra twenty years that I'll never get, but I am." He shrugged again.

"Ah," Sam said. "That's a perfectly valid feeling. Is it going to affect your interactions with either Tony or Rhodey?"

"No," Steve said. "And I don't see them very often, either together or individually. I'll be fine."

"You don't have to pretend everything's okay with me, Steve," Sam said, "but as long as you aren't going to snap at either of them, I don't think you need to force yourself to stop feeling this way. It's . . . I'm pretty sure it's a part of the grieving process, for you."

"Yeah," Steve said and sighed, wiping a hand over his face. "I'm pretty sure you're right. He's alive, though. Why am I grieving?"

"He's changed," Sam said with a shrug.

"Yeah," Steve said again, and slumped against the back of the couch. "Oh well."

Sam reached over and patted Steve on the nearest body part, which happened to be his knee. "Hey, man, I got your back," he said.

"Oh, I know," Steve said, "and without you and Natasha, I'd be long since dead right now. I can't--there's no way I can make it up to you."

"You don't have to," Sam said. "That's not how it works. But, hey, you can buy the pizza next time."

Steve laughed. "Sure thing."

\--

By the time dinner came around, Sam was actually sure he wasn't going to bite anyone's head off; he didn't know about Steve, who just looked mopey. Mopey enough that even Tony noticed.

"Hey, Cap, you feeling less than super today?"

"Lay off, Tony," Steve said, sighing.

Tony was about to say something, but someone--possibly two someones, because both Pepper and Rhodey flanked him--stopped him with what looked like a kick to the ankle, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

Of course, if Tony wasn't allowed to needle Steve, that meant the major topic of conversation was Sam.

"You got, what, fifteen years in, Sam?" Rhodey asked.

"Yeah, eighteen to thirty-three," Sam said. "I finished my bachelor's while still in the service and the GI Bill paid for my master’s in social work."

"And now you work for the VA?" Maria said.

"Now I follow Steve Rogers around," Sam said, choosing the name carefully. "I'm on sabbatical from the VA for the next year."

"Ah," Maria said.

Pepper frowned, but didn't say anything. Rhodey stared down at his plate.

Tony looked at the three of them, and then at Sam and Steve. "Well, they're not going to say it, but I'm second-generation money, so I can be gauche if I need to. You guys okay, financially-speaking, now that SHIELD is, you know, in pieces? Because I'm more than willing to bankroll the search."

"Tony," Pepper said disapprovingly, but Steve laughed.

"Tony, your family's financial advisor managed the trust fund Howard left for me," he said. "I haven't even touched it yet, because I've also got the military backpay and then the salary I was drawing from SHIELD for almost three years. How much money do you think I have?"

"Not as much as me," Tony shot back, but it was half-hearted. "Okay. Good. You know if you ever need anything--"

"We got your number," Sam said.

\--

Pepper disappeared after dinner, citing work and the need for an early night, and Tony wandered off after her.

"Has Tony showed you the gym yet?" Maria said to Steve, who shook his head. "I can show you on my way out. You look like you need a date with a punching bag."

"It'd be nice," Steve said. He looked over at Sam, who shook his head.

"Go on yourself. I don't have extra energy to burn off."

"Okay," Steve said, and followed after Maria, who waved goodbye to Sam.

Rhodey stared after them for a moment and then said to Sam, "You want a beer?"

"Yes," Sam said fervently.

Rhodey went and grabbed a couple of bottles out of the fridge, opening them with a key attached to the underside of the counter, and handed Sam one before sitting at the bar. "Look," Rhodey said, "if anyone on the planet understands what you're going through, it's me."

Sam took a sip of the beer and then raised his eyebrow as far as he could.

Rhodey shrugged. "I'm just saying." He took a sip of his own beer.

"Yeah, I gotcha," Sam said.

"So do you know--" Rhodey said, but stopped when the elevator dinged; they both turned to see Maria get off the elevator.

"--no es la pregunta!" she was saying as the doors shut behind her, and then she noticed that there were people in the room, apparently, because she switched to English and said, "Grandma, I'll call you back, okay?"

"Hablas español?" Sam said, once she'd hung up.

"Sí, claro está," Maria said. "Mi nombre completo es Maria Fernanda Ibarra Hill. Well, Hill Ibarra, if you ask my grandmother, but Ibarra Hill for Anglo purposes."

"Huh," Sam said. "All that time we spent together and I didn't know."

Maria shrugged. "I don't know anything about your grandmother."

"I'll tell you anything you want to know about my grandmama," Sam said, one side of his mouth quirking.

"As tempting as that is," Maria said, returning the half-smile, "I just came back because I forgot my coat, and if I don't call her back, she'll call me at the worst possible time." She strode over to a nearby couch and picked up her suit jacket, slinging it over one arm; Sam dimly remembered her having taken it off before dinner. "I'll see you tomorrow, Sam. You too, Rhodey."

Rhodey waved, and Sam said, "Adiós, Maria."

"Oh, God, stick to English until you stop sounding like you learned Spanish from Sesame Street," she said, although her smile widened into a grin, and she left.

"I grew up in _Harlem_ ," Sam said to Rhodey. "I didn't learn no damn Spanish from Sesame Street."

"Philly," Rhodey said. "Well, until I was a junior in high school, when my mama got scared and moved us out to the suburbs."

"What happened?" Sam asked, because something had obviously happened.

"MOVE Bombing," Rhodey said shortly.

"Shit," Sam said.

"Yeah. And then I become best friends with the guy whose daddy probably made the bomb." Rhodey sighed and drained the rest of his bottle of beer. "It's something I gotta spend too much energy not thinking about. My mama died when I was in college and she was so proud of me for going to MIT but I don't know what she'd think about what I've done since." He ticked off a list on his fingers. "Friends with Tony Stark, career military, weapons design, flying helicopters in a war zone, flying a suit I let someone name War Machine, letting the military rename it Iron Patriot, dating a white lady . . ." He sighed again. "Well, no, she’d be fine with that last part. Sorry. I didn't mean to unload on you. I just--I've never said anything about this to Tony, and who the hell else am I gonna tell?"

"You got to fly helos?" Sam said, and Rhodey laughed. "No, I understand. I have that kind of face where people tell me things. It's why I became a counselor, not the other way around."

"Yeah, I can see that," Rhodey said.

"Do you like what you do?" Sam said. "The Air Force, Iron Patriot, everything."

"Yeah, I do, and I don't know if that ain't the worst betrayal." Rhodey slid off his seat and went to get a second beer, popping the top off before he sat back down. "Okay. Less serious shit. Baseball?"

"You want Steve for that," Sam said, laughing. "Basketball?"

Rhodey made a face. "Do you know how many Lakers games Tony has dragged me to?"

"Not a fan?"

"Not a fan of the _Lakers_." He shuddered.

"Good," Sam said. "We can be friends."

\--

The next morning, Sam woke up early, but Pepper apparently woke up even earlier, because she'd left a message for him with Jarvis that the Wakandan Design Group had gotten back to her already. " _Apparently King T'Challa would love to meet with you_ ," she said in the short recording. " _He suggests London, as he'll be there this weekend for unrelated matters, and he has access to some lab space there. Obviously we can send you on either a Stark Industries jet, or Tony's private jet, and due to the, ah, sensitive nature of the excursion, I'll be handling some of the details myself. Please have Jarvis tell me when you're ready to meet, and I'll figure out how to work it in my schedule._ " 

"Wow," Sam said. "Okay. Well, Jarvis, I was gonna shower, maybe go for a run first, but, uh."

"There is a gym that you may use on the sixty-fifth floor, Mr. Wilson. Captain Rogers used it last night."

"Okay, cool."

Four miles and a shower later, he told Jarvis to tell Pepper that he was up and at 'em, and she responded almost immediately. "Can you come down and see me for a few minutes now?"

It was about seven-fifteen, and Sam wasn't sure if he should wake Steve up before he left or not, but when he went into the main living area, Steve was staring at the coffee maker, trying to figure out how it worked.

"It looks like a Keurig, but doesn't work like one," Steve said.

"You know how to work a Keurig?"

"Yeah, they have one at SHIELD. Had." Steve's face grew stony for a moment, but then he relaxed. "Hey, Jarvis, can you help?"

"Indeed I can, Captain Rogers."

"I gotta go talk to Pepper," Sam said, gesturing to the door. "Good luck with the coffee machine."

"Thanks," Steve said. "Now where does the pod go?"

\--

Pepper was, as always, impeccably dressed when Sam met her in her office, and he regretted his jeans and t-shirt a little bit. But she smiled warmly and gestured for him to sit down. "When do you think you can leave?" she said, after inquiring about how the guest rooms had worked for him.

"Well, I have to see my mother today," he said, "or there will be hell to pay, but I can probably leave tomorrow morning if that's okay."

"Of course it is," Pepper said. "King T'Challa's PA expected something like that. I've put in preliminary booking at a hotel near the location he gave for the lab space. It's for three days, and I can extend it if necessary. How does an eight AM flight work for you?"

"Uh, that's fine." Her efficiency was actually a little scary.

"Are you going to need anything from DC?" she asked.

"Maybe," Sam said, after a moment of thought. "I don't have any formal clothes, or at least nothing more formal than business casual. Do you think I'm gonna need a suit?"

Pepper wrinkled her nose. "You know, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea. I can call someone and make it happen."

"You know," he said, "thanks, but I feel like this is taking a lot of time from your actual job."

"I have vice presidents and secretaries to do that job," she said, waving his objections away with one hand. "Honestly, this is what I _like_ doing."

"Organizing other people's lives?"

"Travel plans," she said, smiling. "I'm sorry I don't get to go. I like London better than most cities I get to travel to. Have you been there before?"

"Nope," Sam said.

"I hope you enjoy it. Now, I can't send Tony along because he'll probably blow up the whole city trying to prove something to T'Challa and himself, but he did suggest sending Rhodey for technical expertise, and probably Maria just to make sure that nothing happens. I assume you’ll want Steve along with you, as well. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good to me." He really had no idea if he'd really need that many people, but hey.

"All right," she said, and the phone on her desk rang before she could even finish. "If you'll excuse me?"

Sam nodded, and left.

\--

Steve offered to come along with him to visit his mom, but Sam shook his head and said he didn't want to inflict his family on anyone else. Of course, he realized while sitting on the A train that Steve probably wanted to come along so he didn't have to be stuck in Stark Tower all evening, but it was too late at that point.

His family still lived in Harlem, but in a neighborhood close enough to Columbia that some gentrification had happened, and the building he'd grown up in had gotten a remodeled foyer since the last time he'd visited. The inside of the apartment was mostly the same, but his parents had repainted and rearranged the furniture as well, and everything felt just slightly off-kilter.

"Sam!" his mother said, and hugged him for a long few minutes. "I thought you was going to die."

"I did too, Mama," he said, patting her on the back. "I did too."

His sister Sarah was there, with her husband Jake and their son Jody, and his nephew Jim, but not his brother Gideon or Gideon's wife; apparently Jim and his parents were not getting along this week. Too bad; Sam would have liked to have everybody there, but he would take what he could get.

"So what's for dinner?" he asked, smelling something wonderful, and his mother was only too happy to tell him.

\--

He returned to Stark Tower just before midnight, wishing he was going to be in New York for a few more days, but he had to do what he had to do, and everyone understood that.

Standing outside the elevator door, he shifted the bag full of leftovers (that he wouldn't have time to eat, but maybe Steve would) from one hand to the other. The door opened mere seconds later, but the elevator wasn't empty; Maria Hill was leaning against the back wall, looking wiped. "Maria," Sam said. "Tell me you're going home."

"I'm going the fuck home," she said, standing up and walking out of the elevator, "and I'm going to throw shit in a bag and get like four hours of sleep before I have to be on a plane to England."

"Aw, man," he said, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she said, sighing. "It's probably mine, or Stark's. Yeah, it's Stark's fault. Let's go with that."

"Sounds good," he said. "You getting a cab home?"

"Oh, no," Maria said. "I've got a company car and driver coming." She smiled, although it was more teeth than mirth. "You get some sleep, too."

"I can wait with you until the car gets here," he said. "Make sure you stay awake."

"Protect me from the big, bad predators stalking Park Avenue?" Her voice was sharp.

"Nah, man, you'd have to protect me from the rich white boys," Sam said.

"That's fair," Maria said. She jerked her head to the side in a 'follow-me' motion and went to stand near the outer set of glass doors. "Hold still," she said, and used his shoulder as a support so she could take off her heels--four inches tall and probably usable as weapons, Sam thought--and roll up the hems of her pants.

It abruptly put her at his chin, instead of almost on eye level, and he stopped wondering why she wore shoes that tall. She wasn't precisely short, not like Natasha was in bare feet, or his cousin Aisha who wasn't even five feet tall, but she couldn't look him in the eye without tipping his head up, and that was strange.

"What's in the bag?" she asked, hooking her heels onto the edge of her bag and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Smells good."

"Leftovers from my mama," he said. "She made some sort of gourmet macaroni and cheese, I don't even know what's in it, but it was tasty as hell. I'm probably not going to get to eat it, no," he said at her furrowed brow, "but maybe Steve will eat it for breakfast or something."

"Probably," she said. She leaned against him again and adjusted her stocking, and then just stayed leaning. "I'm so fucking tired," she said. "I had eight meetings today. Eight. How am I supposed to get my actual work done if I'm just in meetings about stupid things?"

"Have you told Pepper about this?" Sam asked, although he realized a second later that he was supposed to sympathize rather than make suggestions. He blamed it on being tired and stuffed.

"Yeah, and she just laughed." She rested her head on his shoulder, and Sam slid his arm around her waist, his heart in his throat.

She didn't throw him off immediately, so he relaxed incrementally. "I hope you can sleep on the plane," he said.

"I could probably sleep standing here," she said ruefully, and just as she finished, a dark sedan with tinted windows pulled up. "My ride's here. Thanks," she said, and patted him on the shoulder as she left.

"You're welcome." He watched her leave, and once the car pulled away, he went inside.

\--

Sam hadn’t expected to do anything but sleep, but when he got to the suite that he and Steve were sharing, Steve was wearing a baseball cap and carrying a backpack and--leaving?

“Sam,” Steve said, shuffling from one foot to the other. “I, uh. Natasha called.”

“For real?” Sam said. “She needs us?”

“Well, she needs _someone_ ,” Steve said. He pulled off the baseball cap, ran his hand over his hair, and replaced the hat. “I guess--I guess the Winter Soldier burned down a couple of HYDRA buildings last night, and she wants to make a move.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “I can’t--I have to go to London,” he said.

“I know,” Steve said. “Natasha knows. But I don’t really need to be there. You’ve got Maria and Rhodey.”

Sam twisted his lips to one side. “I guess, but I want you there, Steve.” He sighed. “But if you need to go help Natasha, I’ll be fine. Maybe I can fly in at the last moment and save the day,” he said, trying to force a smile.

“I hope I don’t need you to,” Steve said, with a grin that looked no more real than Sam’s felt.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Okay. See you soon, Steve.”

Steve nodded, reached out and clapped Sam on the shoulder, and said, “See you, Sam.” He left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Sam stared at the door for a moment and then went to grab what sleep he could.

\--

 

The smallest Stark Industries private jet, which was apparently what Pepper had meant when she said "Tony's private jet," still came complete with a bar and some strange repair marks on the ceiling. Rhodey laughed. "There used to be stripper poles, but once Pepper became CEO and the jet officially became hers instead of Tony's, she explained to him patiently how they threatened the structural integrity of the plane and he agreed they were best removed."

"Stripper poles, huh." Maria didn't sound surprised. She had been wearing sunglasses, but she took them off once they were inside the plane and she had closed all the nearby window shades.

"Yeah. Once Tony actually hired the winner of a pole-dancing competition and she performed this amazing routine--you know, I probably shouldn't be waxing lyrical about this, should I," Rhodey said.

Maria snorted. "Please. As if I should expect anything different from a pair of zoomies."

"Hey, hey, hey," Sam said.

"You're outnumbered, Jarhead," Rhodey said, grinning.

Maria yawned ostentatiously, put her sunglasses on and, for all intents and purposes, fell asleep.

"She a Marine?" Sam said in a stage whisper.

"Yeah," Rhodey said. "Recruited out of the Corps straight into SHIELD."

"That explains a lot," Sam said.

Maria moved exactly enough to flip Sam off, and then tucked her hand back where it had been and ignored them so hard that it was nearly a palpable thing.

“I’m sorry Steve couldn’t make it,” Rhodey said. “I guess something came up?”

“Yeah, something,” Sam said.

“Does it have anything to do with the suspicious fires in Chicago last night?” Rhodey asked.

“It just might,” Sam said. “Did Tony tell you?” He wasn’t sure how Tony would know, but, well, Iron Man.

“Nah,” Rhodey said, leaning back in his seat. “I’ve just been in this business too long.”

Sam chuckled, told the nice flight attendant that he didn't need anything, and settled in to try to nap for at least a little bit.

Seven and a half hours, a really nice lunch, and two movies that weren't out on DVD yet later, they landed in London.

It was 8:30 pm local time, and Pepper's super-detailed itinerary had them being served something like dinner at 9:30, after they'd made it to their hotel and settled in some. The cab ride over from the airport to the hotel wasn't very memorable, as it was dark out already, but both Rhodey and Maria promised that they should have some time to do the usual tourist things during daylight. Their hotel was about four times as expensive as Sam would have chosen for himself, but maybe Stark Industries got a corporate discount or something, he thought, laughing at himself. It was a quartet of rooms with a central area housing a dining/conference area, a couple couches, and a kitchenette; dinner was served at the table a half hour or so after they got there.

Sam's room was maybe a shade less nice than the room at Stark Tower, but still so far beyond sufficient that he could only laugh. The shower felt good, though, and he rinsed off some of the travel dust before he went to bed.

They were supposed to meet King T'Challa at the Wakandan embassy in London at nine the next morning--which was a weird thought in and of itself. Did royalty, even African royalty, actually exist outside of fairy tales? Due to jet lag, though, Sam found himself still awake past two in the morning. After checking his messages--nothing new from Steve or Natasha--and checking the news out of Chicago--nothing more about the fires and nothing else specific--he crept out of his room and into the main area of the suite. Finding himself a cup, he filled it with water, even though there were cups and a tap in his suite's attached bathroom.

"Boo," said someone behind him, and Sam jumped a foot in the air before realizing it was Maria, curled up in the corner of the couch with an e-reader of some sort, and he was perfectly safe.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked quietly, even though his heart was pounding so loud that he was sure everyone could hear it.

"Probably the same thing you are," she said. "Well, no, I don't want water, but jet lag and napping on the plane means I'm still not tired." She shrugged and set the tablet aside. "And the room's too big, too empty."

"My room's less empty," he said. "Same size, though."

"Yeah," she said. "You know what? Not yet."

Sam was a little thrown by her response; he'd just expected her to laugh, and he didn't manage a response for a few seconds.

"Come here," she said, before he could put together words, and he did, sitting on the couch next to her, a few inches of space between them. "I like you," she said, "but the last month has just been one damn thing after another, and I don't know that either of us is ready for what you're offering."

He thought for half a second about protesting, but that was as long as he needed to realize that yeah, she was right; he didn't just want her to take the other half of his bed, or even one (or three) nights of sex. He hadn't actually consciously figured that out--still hadn't absorbed it, really, but her words rang true. "Okay," he said, as carefully as he could.

"Okay for real, or okay just to get out of this conversation?" she said, and even in the faint light from outside he could see that only one corner of her mouth was pulled up in a smile.

"Little bit of both," he admitted, and turned his hand over, palm up but not touching her. She put her hand in his, and he rubbed his thumb over the side of her index finger. "Next time I'm in New York, and I don't mean in a few days when we get back from London, but the time after that, you wanna get some dinner, maybe see a movie?"

"Yeah, we should do that," she said, and squeezed his hand.

He smiled, and she smiled, and then she reached out and grabbed the front of his t-shirt, using it to pull him in for a kiss.

It was slow and sweet, lighting a long fuse; Sam could have continued kissing Maria for hours, but she ended the kiss, let go of his shirt, and stood. "Okay," she said. "That was perfect, but it isn't going to help me sleep, or help me concentrate on doing my actual job, so I'm going in there--" She pointed to her door. "--and you're going in there, and we're both going to pretend to sleep, if nothing else."

"I can do that," Sam said. "I'll see you in the morning." He leaned over and kissed her again, lightly. "Good night, Maria."

"Night, Sam."

\--

He did get some sleep--quite a bit of sleep--but he fell asleep thinking of Maria, and the first time he’d met her, in the back of a truck when he thought he’d been captured. He’d thought she was amazing and scarily competent, and his first impression hadn’t turned out to be wrong. He hadn’t really realized when ‘she’s amazing’ turned into ‘I could be with her,’ but it had.

He woke up thinking of Maria, and when he was done cleaning up and got breakfast, he saw Maria, and her smile was a little warmer than usual. "Hey," she said, handing him a cup of coffee.

"Hey," he said in return.

Rhodey looked back and forth between the two of them but said only, "The car should be here in about fifteen minutes."

The wings were in a couple of boxes; Rhodey carried one and Sam carried the other, leaving Maria to open the doors and keep other people away from the two of them. Not that there were that many people at eight-thirty in the morning, but, well, Maria was security, after all. The car was an invisible black SUV, big enough to have room for the boxes and seats for all three of them plus the driver, who said nothing to them other than that he was from the Wakandan embassy. Maria asked to see his papers, and what he'd provided had apparently satisfied her, because she let them get into the car.

The drive was short; they were there well before nine, but they and the boxes were ushered into a reception room of some sort. No more than five minutes later, in strode a tall man in a sharply tailored black suit, with matching black-on-black patterned shirt and tie, that all probably cost more than Sam made in the last six months. His skin was dark, as dark as Rhodey's, and his hair was a little longer than Rhodey's or Sam's own, and his features were a little stern, but he broke into a smile when he saw them.

"Sam Wilson, Colonel Rhodes, Ms. Hill," he said, shaking each of their hands in turn. "It is wonderful to meet you. I'm T'Challa."

Sam had guessed that he was looking at the king of Wakanda, and damn, did he look like a king. Unexpectedly, though, he had a very formal British accent, the kind that sounded like he should be a newscaster for the BBC. "Hello, your majesty," Sam said.

"Your majesty," Maria echoed.

"Good to meet you, your majesty," Rhodey said. He fidgeted a little; Sam figured it was probably because he was wearing a civilian suit instead of the Air Force dress blues he'd normally wear to meet people of this level of importance. Sam had a decade less time in the military and he'd been out for a while, but he still sympathized.

"I assume your flight was uneventful, and that you settled into your hotel well?"

"Yes, everything was fine," Sam said. He figured he was kind of point man on this detail, even if he still felt a military instinct to defer to Rhodey. "Thank you so much for agreeing to see us on such short notice."

Unexpectedly his smile turned into a grin that made him look almost boyish, and made Sam's estimation of his age go down about five years to mid-thirties, roughly the same as Sam himself. "You wear my wings," he said. "How could I not? Now, I understand they were damaged in battle. Where are they?"

Sam indicated the boxes sitting on the conference table, and King T'Challa raised an eyebrow. "Well. That's more than merely 'damaged,' I suppose. We should move this to the lab."

"I'm sorry," Sam said.

T'Challa waved a hand. "I have seen the news footage. You were fighting the Winter Soldier, to save your country. It would be absurd to hold you responsible for their demise."

"That's very nice of you," Sam said.

"I shall call for a car, and we can be at the lab in no more than a half hour, I would guess," T'Challa said. "Please excuse me." He stepped to the door and spoke to someone just outside, returning a moment later. "Our ride will be here in a few minutes. Would any of you care for some refreshments? Tea?"

"I'm fine," Sam said, and Rhodey and Maria murmured their agreement. "But thank you for offering."

"Good," T'Challa said. "Please, take a seat." He gestured to the nearby seats, and they sat. "How is my good friend Tony Stark?"

Rhodey couldn't stifle his snort; Maria bit her lip, and Sam found himself nodding at the amount of shade thrown with one simple question.

"Tony's great," Rhodey said a moment later. "I'm sure he sends his regards."

"You may tell him that I am always available to proof his math," T'Challa said, inclining his head.

"I'll tell him that at the best possible moment," Rhodey said, and T'Challa laughed.

"We have not met before, have we, Colonel Rhodes?"

"Not officially," Rhodey said, "but I've been around while you and Tony were pretending to be best friends."

"I respect Tony Stark immensely," T'Challa said, poorly suppressing a grin.

"And I'm sure you'd get along fine if he could ever get over the fact that you called him out, your majesty," Rhodey said.

The door opened, and a man popped his head in. "Your majesty, your car is here."

"Excellent. Let us go."

Instead of an SUV, King T'Challa had a limo, or maybe a town car; whatever it was, the driver was segmented off by a dark glass window, and half the seats were backwards. The boxes loaded easily into one end of a seat, and Sam sat by them rather proprietarily; Maria joined him, and T'Challa and Rhodey faced them. "The WGD has some offices in London," T'Challa said, "and they rent secure lab space nearby. We are headed there; it should not take long."

"Sounds good, your majesty," Sam said. A moment later, completely unexpectedly, his jaw cracked as he found himself yawning hugely. "Whoops, sorry," he said, and tried to rub his jaw discreetly; the crack had hurt.

"Jet lag?" T'Challa asked. "My sympathies." But then a moment later he yawned, too. "And yet I do not have that excuse."

Maria and Rhodey were, of course, yawning as well, and everything was starting to swim a little bit. Sam couldn't understand why he was this tired, and he leaned over against Maria for some support. The last thing he registered before he fell asleep was Maria saying, "We've been drugged."

\--

Sam rose out of the depths of unconsciousness slowly; he became aware of his surroundings in pieces. It was dark, wherever he was, and he was on a flat surface that felt like rock or concrete. The back side of his body was cold, and he shivered a little. He tried to move all of his limbs, and discovered quickly that the reason his left wrist was colder than his right was that there was a shackle around it, and he was chained to something that didn't move. It was probably the wall. He had a bit of a headache and some bruises he didn't remember acquiring, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

Once he had attained a certain level of alertness, he figured he needed to see what was up with everyone else. He sat up carefully, trying to keep within the range of motion allowed by the shackle and short chain, and blinked a few times. There was no window, and no light showed under the door, if there was one, so he couldn't see a damn thing. "Hello?" he said quietly.

He heard two groans, one decidedly female, and an answering, "Hello." The last was from T'Challa, and he turned to face the direction of the voice, even if he couldn't see a damn thing.

"Are you all right?"

"Cold, sore, and very apologetic for putting you in this situation," T'Challa said. "I did not expect anyone to kidnap us in the middle of London, during the day." He sounded disgusted.

Sam couldn't figure out how to respond to that, so he didn't. "Can you see anything? I can't."

"Shapes and outlines," T'Challa said. "I am to your right, as you know; Ms. Hill is between us. Colonel Rhodes is on your other side."

"Ahh." Sam reached out carefully with his free hand and luckily encountered Maria's shoulder before anything else. Her hand grabbed his and twisted. "Ow! Maria, it's me!" he said, because that would have been the stupidest way he'd ever broken a finger.

"Should know better," she said, her voice a little slurred, but she released his hand.

"Yeah, you're right, Maria, I should know better," he said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm pretty sure there's a marching band practicing in my skull," she said, sounding a lot better even those few seconds later, "but that's it." She scooted to sit up next to him. T'Challa moved to help her, and Sam turned to Rhodey.

"You awake yet?"

"Am now," Rhodey said. "Shit. What happened?"

"Swazosec," Maria said. "Ugh, it's the only one that gives me this particular headache."

"So no one knows where we are?"

"We are in a concrete room," T'Challa said, "and I, for one, am not wearing the clothing I came in."

Sam patted himself with one hand. "Neither am I. It feels like scrubs or something."

"Ditto," Maria said. "They left me my bra, which is a mixed blessing."

"Underwire?" Rhodey said, while Sam couldn't work out whether he should be embarrassed or not.

"Yeah. Ow."

"But nobody's been injured, other than headaches?" Rhodey said, his tone very careful.

"No," Maria said. “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 _Oh_ , Sam thought, and something inside him froze.

"Okay," Rhodey said, sounding relieved.

"So no one has a cell phone or a knife or anything," Sam said, sighing. "And no one knows how long we were out."

"No more than a few hours," Maria said. "Swazosec only lasts about five or six hours on me, if it's airborne."

"That's useful," Sam said. "So we're only a few hours away from London, which, even by plane, still limits the radius."

"Hopefully at some point someone will come in and tell us what they want," Maria said.

"Do you think they're listening?" Rhodey asked.

"Better to assume they are," Maria said.

"Okay," Rhodey said. "Let's go with that."

Something rattled, and Maria said, "Sorry. It's cold in here."

"It is," Rhodey said. "I wouldn't say it's more than sixty in here."

"You mean fifteen," T'Challa said, and Rhodey chuckled.

"That too."

"Here, scoot over," Sam said, and held out his free arm; Maria slid next to him, the chain around her wrist going over her left shoulder as she crossed her arms in front of her. "Does that help?"

"Well, not yet," she said, a little tartly, and then leaned her head on his shoulder. "Are either of the two of you cold? I'm sure you can join our party."

Rhodey and T'Challa moved in carefully, and all four of them huddled together in silence for a few minutes.

"It's a good thing I don't have to pee," Maria said.

"There's a bucket in the corner. You might be able to reach it," T'Challa said. "Or I can move it to you."

"How can you see so well in the dark?" Sam asked. "Or am I the only one who just can't see anything?"

"It's not just you," Rhodey said.

"Yeah, and he's got helicopter pilot vision," Sam said.

"Just lucky, I guess," T'Challa said, and it rang a little strangely, but Sam didn't have the energy to figure out why.

It was maybe another half hour before someone came to open the door; the resulting influx of light kept Sam from seeing their captors at first, but he could hear them well enough.

"Which one of you is King T'Challa?"

As if they'd agreed, none of them said anything at first, but when the guard came in far enough to land a kick on Maria's shin, T'Challa said, "Stop. I am he."

"Yeah, it's the tall one," a second guard said; both guards had harsh accents, probably native German speakers or something along those lines, if Sam had to guess. "Take him."

Sam almost asked if they were going to kill him, but all things considered, T'Challa was by far the prisoner worth the most, so they would probably treat him better than the rest of them. He would sell his _soul_ for Maria not to be taken by herself, but he couldn't think about that or he'd try to break out with his bare hands.

The first guard, and Sam could see that he was a white guy with dirty-blond hair and a pseudo-military uniform, came in far enough to handcuff T'Challa behind his back and hold a gun to his head as he unlocked the shackle and frog-marched him out. The door slammed shut, leaving them in darkness and silence again, until Sam spoke.

"Really? They couldn't tell three black guys apart?"

Rhodey laughed. "That's the first time I've ever been mistaken for royalty."

"If it's true, that's pretty terrible," Maria said. "Sounded like it was just that one guard to me, but I don't know. It tells us there isn't video surveillance in here, though."

"It's dark. Nothing to surveil," Sam said.

"True enough."

"Doesn't mean they don't have _audio_ surveillance, of course," Maria said. "Let's try something. Hablan español?"

"Sí," Sam said.

"Así así," Rhodey said.

She asked them about French, Arabic, Farsi, and Mandarin; Sam knew AFCLC Arabic and Farsi, and Rhodey knew at least that much of all the languages Maria did. "Okay," she said. "Well, that helps."

T'Challa came back about half an hour later, looking unharmed as far as Sam could see, and a second guard was carrying the boxes of the wings, plus four or five boxes of what looked like extra supplies. "I am to build them wings," he said, once the guard left again, "and I told them that I would need your assistance, all of you."

"Well, that explains why they left the light on," Sam said. And, although he didn't say it, why they were all now unshackled. A part of his mind felt much happier at being unchained, all out of proportion to the actual discomfort of being tied down, and he spent a moment chasing out images straight out of _Roots_ before he could come back to reality.

Rhodey gave a sharp chuckle. "You'd think that people would know this is a bad idea by now."

"Heh, right," Maria said.

Sam didn't know what they were talking about, although he clearly knew they were talking about something. The light, a pair of dingy fluorescent tubes, illuminated the concrete box, about ten feet square; there was a bucket in the corner, as T'Challa had said. Sam couldn't see any cameras or microphones, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

"They have not left us any power sources," T'Challa said.

"Oh," Rhodey said. "Well, there go my plans."

"Let us take inventory," T'Challa said, and they did, separating out what was in the boxes at his direction. At the end, he said, "Other than the power supplies, this is nearly enough to make five sets of wings. I will tell them what we are missing."

"Tell them to give you three of these joints instead of two," Maria said, tapping on one pile that was short a few items. She leaned over as if to grab another item for inspection (Sam didn't know what most of the stuff on the table was), and murmured something in T'Challa's ear. He gave a tiny nod.

But when they came back with a second delivery of supplies, maybe an hour later, there were three joints instead of two. "Okay," Maria said, "they aren't listening."

"So we can talk freely?" Sam said.

"I wouldn't say freely," she said, "as they can still hear us if they're right outside the door, I think, but a little more than before."

"Ah," T'Challa said.

It was on that single syllable, round and a little more forward in his mouth without the faint 'r' sound at the end that Sam was used to hearing from him, that he finally put together that T'Challa's accent was changing; that he was sounding more . . . well, more Wakandan, the more he spoke. It made sense to Sam, and he was happy, or maybe honored, that the king was losing his 'White People are Watching' voice and sounding more like he probably did when he was at home--at least, at home speaking English--around them.

Either that, or he had been awake for too long and had stopped caring. But the change was gradual, not immediate, and Sam liked to think that he was getting more comfortable.

He shook his head, because it wasn't important whether T'Challa sounded like a British newscaster or not. "Anyway, so now that we can talk, I think we need to know if anyone has anything special we need to know about."

"Anything special?" T'Challa said, but Sam was looking at Rhodey, who sighed.

"There's a tracker on me," he said quietly, "because my best friend is a paranoid asshole who, to be fair, was kidnapped and tortured by terrorists. Also, if I'm within about a hundred miles, and I mean a full hundred, of the Iron Patriot suit, there's a pretty good chance I can call it to me."

T'Challa smiled widely. "I saw Tony Stark do that on the news," he said. "It is quite impressive. It would probably work better if we were not in a concrete box, yes."

“Yeah,” Rhodey said. “I’m sure Tony’s looking for me anyway. I mean, looking for us.”

“And I am certain that my family and security staff is looking as well.”

“If Steve and Natasha know I’m missing, they’ll look,” Sam said with a shrug. “Don’t know if they know yet.”

"I’ve got people, too,” Maria said. “I’m not sure we should count on rescue, though.”

“No,” Rhodey said in agreement, and Sam and T’Challa nodded.

“But if we can get the suit," Maria said, "you can blow your way out of here easily, right?"

Rhodey nodded. 

"So we need to get out of here to be able to get the suit, and from there we can leave, and there's a chance that once we get out of here Stark will be able to track Rhodey and get us help."

"Rhodey?" T'Challa said, sounding delighted. "May I call you that?"

"Yeah, sure," Rhodey said. "People who weren't introduced to me by Tony usually call me Jim, but I'll answer to either."

"Ah. Tony is to blame for that one."

"He likes to hand out nicknames," Rhodey said with a shrug. "Rhodey's not as bad as Pepper. She couldn't convince anyone to call her 'Ginny' after that, so she just gave in."

Maria snorted. "Happy, too, I understand."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Do you want me to solder those connections?" He pointed to a thingamabob that fit into a whatsit.

Sam at least knew what a soldering iron was, but he held his hands up and said, "I gotta stay out of this or I'm gonna break something."

"You won't," T'Challa said, "and you can hand me the Phillips screwdriver on your right."

Sam knew what that was, too, and handed it over.

Over the next few hours, Maria slipped in various tests, and as it turned out, no, the guards weren't listening in at all. "Hacks," she said, sniffing. "Okay, let's talk about how we're going to do this."

"You're the expert at this," Rhodey said as he held a tiny wire to an even tinier connection. Sam watched in fascination at the precision of his movements. "Do you have any ideas?"

"What is the mechanism you use to call the suit?" T'Challa asked.

Rhodey finished the line of soldering he was working on and said, "I've got tiny implants in my arms that, when I make certain gestures, will send out a signal to call the suit over to me."

"What protocol?"

"Yes," Rhodey said. "Whatever's available. The first generation just used line-of-sight satellites, but this current one will use GSM, satellites, Bluetooth, regular Wi-Fi, AM, FM, et cetera."

"With a range limit of a hundred and sixty kilometers?"

"We've never tried it any farther," Rhodey said. He wiped off the tip of the soldering iron and set it down. "Tony and I tend to get a little nervous when we're that far away from our suits."

"Understood," T'Challa said. "So we need to get your little implants access to some sort of radio waves, effectively, and they will call your suit. Do you think it is still in the hotel room?"

"Should be, and yes, it can punch its way out a window," Rhodey said.

"Can it navigate its way through a building?"

Rhodey sighed. "Tony's gonna kill me," he said, looking up at the ceiling. "Yes. There's a rudimentary AI in my suit."

"Jarvis?" Sam asked.

"No, unconnected to Jarvis," Rhodey said, "although the suit can connect to Jarvis if needed."

"Who or what is Jarvis?" T'Challa asked.

Rhodey blinked, and Sam froze. "How about you ask Tony that, the next time you see him," Rhodey said slowly.

T'Challa gave Rhodey one of the most epic side-eyes Sam had ever seen. "I am smart enough to figure out that Jarvis is an AI, and probably not a rudimentary one, since you all but stated that," he said. "If Tony has invented a proper AI, why has he not shared that with the scientific community?"

"He is under no obligation to do so," Rhodey said, voice hard enough to cut glass. "Jarvis is . . . special to Tony, and if or when he feels like introducing Jarvis to people outside of his group of friends, he will."

"Interesting," T'Challa said, seemingly not fazed by Rhodey's Air Force Colonel voice. Then again, Sam thought, why would he be? What's a colonel to a king?

_Shut up, Kanye._

"I am more intrigued by Tony's AI now than I was mere moments ago," T'Challa continued. "But I shall save my questions for the man himself."

Rhodey gave a short, sharp nod and went back to his soldering.

Hours passed. Some sort of food was delivered, a stew with what was probably beef in it, and Rhodey and T'Challa kept working. Eventually Sam found his eyes closing, and Maria tapped him on the shoulder. "Go ahead and sleep," she said. "I'll keep watch, and then we can switch. Rhodey or T'Challa, if you want to nap, too?"

"I am not in need of sleep yet," T'Challa said.

"I got like a decade on you," Rhodey said, "so I'm gonna sleep when I can." He grabbed a pile of plastic bags of air, that had been used to cushion some of the more delicate pieces of the wings, and stretched out on the floor, using them as a pillow.

"I don't suppose there's more of those," Sam said.

Maria sat down on the floor and patted her lap. "I'm going to throw you off if I have to," she warned him.

"That's fine." Sam sat, swiveled around, and laid his head on her thigh. "Ahhh." He slung his arm over his eyes to block the light and felt Maria's hand land on his head, rubbing the top of his cheekbone gently. "Mmm," he said under his breath, but she patted the side of his face to signal that she'd heard.

It wasn't the best nap he'd had, but he managed to catch a little bit of sleep; Maria had to shift a few times so she wouldn't go numb. When he felt like he probably should wake up, Rhodey was still snoring gently in the corner, and T'Challa had taken over soldering tiny connections, staring through a magnifying glass mounted on a stand. "You want a nap, Maria?" he asked, standing up and stretching.

She sighed and twisted her mouth to one side. "I should, but I don't want to."

"On guard?"

"Yeah."

"Here." He sat down and patted his own lap, just as she had, and she sighed again. "At least try?" he said.

"Yeah." She sat down and turned to one side, resting her cheek on his leg.

He pushed her hair back behind her ear, and she grabbed his hand and placed it more firmly on her scalp. "Head rub, Wilson."

"Yes, ma'am."

He felt her relax some as he gently rubbed behind her ears and ran his fingers through her hair; the strands were a little bit greasy, which gave him some idea that they had been in the room for more than a day. Well, probably; it had been a while since he'd been with a white woman, or a white-passing woman, and he didn't really know how long it took their hair to feel like that.

T'Challa worked like a machine or a robot. Even when Rhodey woke up an hour or so later, he kept working. Sam was faintly worried that they would later discover that he _was_ a robot, or that he'd fall over where he stood and destroy everything, but he really couldn't force T'Challa to stop, for a long list of reasons.

The usual guard came by with a second meal, more stew, slightly cold and disgusting, but they ate it anyway. "How far along are you?" the guard asked, his gun held a little carelessly in one hand.

"I have one about half complete," T'Challa said.

"That is not acceptable," the guard said.

"Nonetheless, you may inspect my work." He gestured to the table.

"That is not necessary," the guard said stiffly, and left, locking the door behind him.

"You've gotten more done than that," Rhodey said.

"Well, I have indeed built half a set of wings," T'Challa said, "but I have also built a frequency scanner and an amplifier." He showed a couple of--okay, actually Sam had no idea what was going on, but they looked like the guts of a computer, and one had a tiny antenna like a modem sticking out of one side. "And from the few moments when the door has been open, I have determined that they have wifi in this building."

"So then, you're saying, the next time they open the door, I should call the suit?" Rhodey said.

"Yes," T'Challa said, grinning.

"And then what?" Maria said. "Blow a hole in the wall and hope we don't get hit?"

"Man, I kinda miss Steve and his shield," Sam said. Of course, if Steve had been there, he might not have even succumbed to the drugs, and the whole situation would be very different, but it wasn’t really worth the amount of speculation he was putting into it.

"Yeah," Maria said. "Hell, you all are great, but having, say, the Hulk here too would have been nice."

"I wish Carol were here," Rhodey said, and Sam turned to look at him.

"Yeah, she'd be helpful," Maria said.

"Wait, who's Carol?"

"My girlfriend," Rhodey said.

"And where is she?" Sam asked.

"Classified."

"She an engineer?"

"No, pilot."

"Aw, yeah," Sam said, and offered a fist.

Rhodey bumped it gently and smiled.

"How much can you control the suit when you're not in it?" Maria asked.

"Not much," Rhodey said.

"So that won't work. Basically, there's going to come a point where we're going to have to push our way past the guards and hope that the suit is waiting for you."

Sam sighed. "Well, I knew I was here for a reason."

"No." T'Challa's voice was firm. "You are not cannon fodder, Sam Wilson."

"Well, we need Rhodey to control the suit, and you're the king of Wakanda, and I ain't about to let Maria go first and get herself shot up when she's the only one who got any plans on how to get us out of here," Sam said, standing up and squaring his shoulders. "So that leaves me."

"Do you have any enhanced abilities?" T'Challa asked. He turned to face Sam squarely.

"Nope," Sam said. "I'm just a retired pararescueman. That Others May Live."

"Yes, well," T'Challa said. "Maria Hill, do you have any enhanced abilities?"

"No," she said.

"Jim Rhodes?"

Rhodey shook his head.

"Well, I in fact do," he said, "and I will heal much faster than any of you, and I am much stronger. Once I have set up the amplifier, it will do its work for Rhodes without me, and the wings without a power source are just a blunt object--but one largely made out of a vibranium alloy. I will be first through the door."

"I can't let you do that," Rhodey said immediately.

"How can you stop me?" T'Challa stood up to his full height, close to six and a half feet tall, more than six inches taller than Rhodey.

"I don't think I can stop you," Rhodey said, "but all three of us together might be able to."

"Oh, my God, I'm going to choke to death on the testosterone," Maria said. "Stand down, gentlemen."

The three of them turned to look at her.

"We're all trained in hand-to-hand combat, and I, for one, am pretty good at disarming an opponent. No one is going to have to take a bullet to get out of here. We've been good so far, but they will still be planning on us trying to escape at some point. Timing, then, is the key." She positioned herself in one of the places where the camera couldn't see very well, found a small rock, and used it to scratch marks on the floor, wiping them easily away once she was done. "This is the room. Here's the door. Outside there's a hallway right across from us leading deeper inside. To the right is a dead-end corner. To the left is a hallway that goes towards the outside."

That was all information they already knew; they'd discussed it earlier, using careful positioning during deliveries and T'Challa's superior (enhanced, they now knew) hearing and eyesight to confirm Maria's deductions.

"It's obvious where we need to go, but we need to make sure that no one's behind the door, in the dead end." She drew Xs behind the door. "Reinforcements could also come from either direction; I presume they're guarding the outside of the building, at least a little bit. We have no idea where we actually _are_ , but hopefully that won't matter much. Presumably the suit can tell us." She looked up at Rhodey, and he nodded.

"So right now the entire plan is hinged around getting the suit," Sam said.

"Plan A is hinged around getting the suit," Maria said. "Plan B is much the same at the beginning but requires finding weapons and escaping ourselves."

"Ah," Sam said.

"Go-time should be when the largest number of guards is outside our door, oh," T'Challa said. "I would expect that that would be when I have told them that I am finished."

"Most likely," Maria said in agreement. "So, when that happens--" She drew another four Xs and pointed to each one in turn. "Sam, you'll stand there to see as best you can if anyone is behind the door. I'll be on the other side to check out that direction. T'Challa, you'll have to be near the workbench to keep suspicion low, and Rhodey, we need you near the door so you can do your special magic gestures as soon as possible, but behind Sam or me so we can hopefully hide the gestures from the guards. Does he need to do anything special with the amplifier?"

T'Challa shook his head, and Sam wondered for a moment how that would work but honestly, he didn't care about engineering any more than he needed to know to fly the wings.

"What is the gesture, by the way?" T'Challa asked.

Rhodey rolled his eyes and sighed, holding his arms up in fists in front of his shoulders, and then crossing his forearms at chest height to make an X. "I did not get to choose," he said.

"Obviously not," Maria said, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing.

"How close are you to being done with the sets of wings?" Rhodey said, turning deliberately towards T'Challa.

"A few hours, I think."

"Do you need sleep?" Maria asked.

"Maybe a little," he said, lines appearing in his brow. "I do not think my dexterity is affected yet but I should not allow it to become so."

"Sleep," Maria said. "We won't start anything until you are awake again."

T'Challa took in a breath and released it before nodding. "All right," he said, and curled up on the floor, his back to the wall, facing the door. His breath evened out and he appeared to fall asleep almost immediately.

Maria exchanged a glance with Sam and shrugged, lying down in the middle of the floor and starting to do situps; for lack of anything better to do, Sam watched her. Rhodey sifted through a pile of short pieces of wire, arranging them by size and then by color before plugging the soldering iron in again.

T'Challa slept for some period of time; Sam thought it might have been an hour, but without any timepieces, it could have been forty-five minutes or two hours and he wouldn't really know. The lack of any delineated day and night was starting to get to him, even though it had been barely twenty-four hours in the cement room. Well. He thought. Actually, he didn't know at all, and that was bothering him more than he'd ever suspected it would. He rubbed his hands over his upper arms and leaned back against the wall. 

Maria had switched to doing something that looked halfway between yoga and jiujitsu; he thought about joining her, but there really wasn't that much room. He hoped she wasn't tiring herself out pointlessly, but she had slept a little earlier and she was Maria Hill. He could trust her not to jeopardize their plan, if he could trust anyone in the room.

T'Challa finished another two sets of wings, which made five, and carefully, after Maria's nod, called out the door, "I have finished!"

Nothing happened, so T'Challa pounded on the door and called out again. A few minutes later he nodded, and a moment after that Sam heard footsteps. A guard, presumably, stopped outside the door and called in through the food slot, "What do you want?"

"I have finished," T'Challa said.

"Just a moment," the guard said, and the footsteps receded. Sam positioned himself where Maria had told him to, and Rhodey stood behind him and off to the side a little, leaning faux-casually against the wall. Maria sauntered to the other side, making it look a lot more convincingly natural than anyone else in the room, and T'Challa returned to the workbench. 

Sam counted eleven breaths before the footsteps returned with company, and another three before the door started swinging open. He felt Rhodey shift behind him and had to suppress a laugh at the mental image of the Power Rangers move the Air Force colonel was making.

"You have finished?" 

Sam didn't recognize the speaker, a large blond white man with a light brown mustache in an expensive gray suit, but T'Challa seemed to. "Yes, I have," he said. "Five sets, as you asked."

It occurred to Sam that if the man knew anything about engineering, he might be able to recognize that there were a few things out that had nothing to do with the wings, but he barely glanced at the table before saying, "Fine. We will take them and test them and if they are to our satisfaction, we will not kill you."

Of course, if they didn't work, they probably shouldn't kill T'Challa anyway, since he was the only chance of getting more wings out of them, but Sam wasn't going to say that out loud.

"How do the power supplies hook in?" one of the other guards, younger and darker and dressed in pseudo-military chic, asked. He was shifting foot to foot, but the three others flanking the guy in the suit were stock-still.

"Here and here." T'Challa pointed; he explained how to twist the wires and cap them, and the guard nodded.

Two other guards came in and started packing up the wings; they had three of them in boxes to carry when a sudden crashing noise came from outside the cell. Everyone turned to the door, but Maria was apparently in exactly the right position to see, because she yelled, "Jaime, vamos!"

Rhodey jumped and ducked under Sam's arm to start running; Maria acted like a blocker and knocked over two or three men in Rhodey's way. Sam checked out of the corner of his eye to make sure that T'Challa was doing all right, and when he saw that he was, using one of the sets of wings to bash a guard in the face along with some well-placed kicks and punches at lightning speed, Sam turned to follow after Rhodey.

The element of surprise was working well for them, as well as Rhodey being shorter than a lot of their captors; Sam saw him duck under one guy to punch a second as Maria fended off a third. He himself was busy slamming someone into a wall when he heard Rhodey yell, "Fuck yes!"

Sam looked up just in time to see the Iron Patriot armor form itself around Rhodey, and that was _magical_. It only took a few seconds, and then the suit was spitting out a series of darts. With absolute precision, the darts hit the nearest dozen bad guys, who passed out almost immediately.

Sam dropped his assailant on the floor in an unceremonious heap, feeling absolutely no remorse, and headed back to the cell, following Rhodey in the suit and Maria, who also had dropped her assailants.

T'Challa was standing by the table, still holding a set of wings; there were a couple of unconscious guards on the floor, but he was squaring off with the main guy, and his eyes seemed to have gone pure white. "You have failed," T'Challa said, his voice lower and rumbling in his chest. "Choose your death."

The blond man glanced quickly behind him; Sam saw his gaze flick quickly over himself and Maria before focusing on Rhodey and the frankly _ridiculous_ number of guns bristling from the armor. He turned back to T'Challa, jaw working, and Maria jumped forward just as he started falling to the floor. "Cut off one head," he said, starting to wheeze.

"No, no, the fuck _no_ ," Maria said, pounding on his chest. "Rhodey, do you have Cyanokit on you?"

"...two more take its place!" the blond man said, foam leaking out of his mouth to slide down his cheek as his eyes rolled back in his head and he went unconscious.

"Here," Rhodey said, flipping back his mask and handing her a--well, actually it looked like a popper. "Amyl nitrate. The sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulfate are coming right after."

"Fuck, this is supposed to be done with an IV," Maria said, mostly to herself as she cracked the amyl nitrate--yes, indeed a popper--and held it under the blond man's nose.

"Here." It took sam a moment to recognize that Rhodey was talking to him, and he jumped. Rhodey was holding out a rather large vial and what looked like the world's thickest auto-injector. "Hold this," he said, "so I can get the sodium thiosulfate."

"Actually," Sam said, "I got this." He knelt down, ripped the guy's suit- and shirtsleeves off, and used the latter to tie around his upper arm to get a vein to pop. The autoinjector was so heavily modified that it took a moment to figure out how it worked, but all he had to do was turn the vial upside down and stuff it in the end. No time to swab off the injection site, but if he didn't get the stuff into the guy soon, he'd die anyway. He hit the button on the side and watched the liquid in the vial disappear slowly.

Maria was carefully doing chest compressions on the blond man, her hands covered with the remnants of his suit sleeve to avoid touching the cyanide-laced foam, and he could hear her saying, with each compression, "You. Will. Not. Die. You. Nazi. Scum." It was strangely endearing.

Once the sodium nitrite was gone, Rhodey handed him a second vial and a second weird auto-injector. Sam set it up, hit the button, and they all watched the second vial go in.

"He's breathing again," Maria reported, just when the second vial was all in. "I can't say he won't have brain damage but he might survive."

"If he survives, he _will_ have information for us," T'Challa said, his tone dark, although not as low as it had been. Sam checked, and his eyes had gone back to their normal dark brown.

"The push rates aren't supposed to be that fast, are they?" Sam said, looking at the angry red skin spreading from the injection sites.

"No," Rhodey said. "But he _might_ survive this way; he'll definitely die if we didn't. I'll carry him; the cyanide residue won't hurt the suit." He flipped the mask down and knelt. “Let’s go.”

Maria and Sam backed off to let Rhodey pick the blond man up; T'Challa handed them each a box with wings and wing parts in it, and they trooped out of the room. 

Only then, several minutes after the initial fight, did Sam realize that everyone who had been knocked out by one of the darts was still unconscious. "How long do those tranqs last?" he asked. "And for that matter, why do you have a cyanide antidote kit on you?"

"And why isn't it Cyanokit?" Maria asked.

"Huh? Oh, a couple of hours," Rhodey said. "And Cyanokit has to be done over fifteen minutes or so, and Tony can't figure out how to hack an auto-injector to make it work properly. As to why--" The suit couldn't shrug, not really, but Sam got the overwhelming impression that he would have done so. "Tony Stark."

T'Challa made a small _hmm_ of amusement, echoed by Maria's snort.

As it turned out, they were on the first floor of the building, so it took almost no time to exit, into what looked like a light-industrial suburban area. T'Challa chuckled as they looked around. "We aren't an hour from London," he said. "I recognize this area. We considered renting auxiliary storage space out here." It was mid-afternoon, but it looked fairly deserted; likely any deliveries or transportation needed was already done for the day, but no one was leaving work yet. There was a major road or highway nearby that Sam could hear, but it wasn't visible between the buildings.

"Well, good," Maria said. "You can get us home, or somewhere where we can call for a ride."

"That won't be necessary," said a low female voice behind them. 

Maria dropped her box with a clang and grabbed one of the sets of wings inside it; Sam swung around to see a white woman with shortish blond hair in a blue spandex suit and red boots floating about three feet above the road behind them. 

T'Challa honest-to-God _roared_ and sprang into the air, but the woman shot upwards; he missed her and fell to his knees in the street. Sam was about to drop his box and grab a set of wings himself when he heard Maria--laughing?

"Carol!" Rhodey said, and oh, yeah, that made sense. She settled gently to the ground, a smirk on her face.

"Hi, Rhodey," she said. "Seems you got yourselves out."

Rhodey gestured to the unconscious-probably-dying man and said, "I'd give you a proper welcome, but this guy's getting cyanide everywhere. Be careful."

"Rain check,” she said. “Also, I really hope I didn’t hurt the king of Wakanda," she said, turning to look at him. "Oops. Sorry."

"I am fine," came T'Challa's voice; he was still kneeling. "Merely temporarily embarrassed. I presume you are Colonel Rhodes's girlfriend the pilot."

"Well, yeah," Carol said, "among other things. Iron Man should be right behind me; he's carrying Captain America. Pepper, Natasha, and Happy are following along in a cargo van, but they should probably be another fifteen minutes. Do you need me to take this guy to a hospital or something?"

Rhodey was able to give her directions to a secure military hospital, staffed by people he trusted not to be Hydra or sympathizers, not that far away, especially not at the speeds at which Carol could apparently travel. She listened to Sam's quick description of the treatment he'd already received, and slung him over one shoulder. “Ugh, he’s heavier than he looks.”

“He won’t slow you down a bit,” Rhodey said, a wide, fond smile on his face.

“Of course not,” she said, her grin matching his. She reached over with a red-gloved hand and wrapped her fingers around Rhodey’s gauntlet briefly. “I’ll be back when I can.” Some sort of red mask appeared to cover her face and she took off, almost too fast to see. 

Iron Man appeared a moment later, carrying Steve. The latter was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, his hair wind-rumpled and his shield on one arm; he jumped down from where he’d been balancing on Tony’s foot for the ride. He almost stumbled on the first step but shook himself like a dog and made it over to the four of them on his feet. "Sam! Maria! Everyone. You're all right!"

"Yeah, we're good," Sam said, pulling Steve into a hug. "How long were we gone?"

"Three days," Steve said. "I--Sam, it was--I should have been there. Natasha’s intel, it was good but he got away. If I had gone with you--"

"I get it," Sam said, interrupting him. There would be time for talking later. "Thanks."

"Yeah," Steve said. "You're welcome." He gave Sam another pat on the back and pulled away, setting the shield down against a nearby lamp post.

"Tony," Rhodey said, his face mask flipped up again. "As it turned out, the cyanide antidote kit was useful."

"I told you," Tony said, flipping his own face mask up. "Can we hug it out later when we're not in suits?"

Rhodey laughed. "Sure, Tony."

"Okay, good." He turned to T'Challa, who was making his way to standing. "Your majesty."

"Dr. Stark."

Sam was close enough to see Tony roll his eyes. "Hey, academic truce, you know, for a few minutes at least?"

"Of course. On one condition."

"Oh?" Tony's eyebrow shot up.

"Introduce me to Jarvis," T'Challa said.

Tony's jaw went rock-hard for a moment, and then he said, "We'll see." He shot a glare at Rhodey and said, "See if I invite your girlfriend along next time."

"Pff," Rhodey said.

Sam would have been content to watch the three of them banter, but he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Maria standing beside him. Only instinct let him raise his arms in time; she pressed herself up against him, full-length, one hand behind his head, and guided him down to kiss her.

Their last kiss had been pretty good, but with the adrenaline rush from having just gotten to relative safety and with a few extra days of forced, but not false, intimacy, this one was so much _better_.

"Huh," Sam heard Tony say, the word sort of distant. "How long has _that_ been going on?"

"Can't have been long," Steve said, sounding amused.

Maria broke the kiss long enough to say, "Shut up, Stark." She was smiling as she pressed her lips back to his.

"Hey! Is that any way to treat your boss?"

"Pepper's her boss," Rhodey pointed out helpfully. 

At least, Sam thought it was helpful, somewhere in the small portion of his mind that wasn't concentrating on the feel of Maria's body in the thin scrubs against him. Dimly he was aware that they had gone well past the boundaries of what was polite in public, but he really couldn't find it in himself to care.

A car went by; Maria stiffened a little, but Sam only let her pull away enough to make sure everything was fine, and she came back to continue with enthusiasm. When they finally separated a few inches, he tucked Maria under his arm and found that everyone else was facing mostly away, chatting in a circle as they went through the boxes of wings and broken wing bits. "This is good," Tony said, somewhat reluctantly.

"Why, thank you," T'Challa said, his voice rich with sarcasm. "You know I live for your approval."

"Hey, we called a truce, right?"

"It is true," T'Challa admitted. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Not off the top of my head," Tony said, "but I wouldn't mind a couple more hours with them."

"How long do we have until the van arrives?" Maria asked. She shrugged Sam's arm off gently and sat down on the curb; Sam joined her and replaced his arm around her.

"J? Ah, they're a little under ten minutes out. Is everyone all right?" Tony said. "I probably should have asked that before, but, you know, we're all adults. I figure any of you would have mentioned it."

"I think we're all okay," Rhodey said, and T'Challa nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam said, and Maria murmured her assent before shivering rather violently against him. It was a little cool, Sam conceded inside his head, but all he could do was pull her closer.

Steve, who had been standing by a little awkwardly, apparently saw her, and shrugged out of his jacket like he'd been waiting for the moment. "Here," he said, draping it over her shoulders and, incidentally, Sam's arm. She was smart enough, or maybe cold enough, not to refuse the gesture. Once Steve had backed away, Sam pulled out his arm and let Maria resettle the jacket.

He half-listened to Tony, T'Challa, and Rhodey discuss the wings as they waited; Maria was silent as well, and rested her head on his shoulder. Steve sat nearby and rested his arms on his knees, clearly keeping watch; the shield was now leaning against his leg and he turned every time a car came within a few blocks.

T'Challa heard the van first, apparently, because his head cocked to one side without any reason Sam could determine. All was explained when Tony said, a moment later, "They're here."

A van pulled up, screeching around the corner; Pepper and Natasha jumped out the side doors, clearly ready for a fight, and then simultaneously dropped their shoulders.

"Oh," Pepper said. "You're out already." She was--was she faintly glowing? The edges of her jeans and jacket looked a little bit scorched, and Sam couldn't possibly think of why.

"I'm glad your rescue was not necessary, but I am sad to have denied you the opportunity," T'Challa said gravely, standing and holding a hand out to Pepper.

Natasha, also in jeans and boots and a leather jacket, sauntered over to Sam and Maria. "Well," she said. "I see you got cozy."

"Very cozy, thanks," Maria said breezily. She stood and offered a hand to Sam, who took it and stood as well. 

"Sorry about not being around for the thing in Chicago," Sam said to Natasha, who shrugged.

"It's fine. We'll find him again."

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Steve said, “is there anything we need to get out from inside the building?”

“They’re Hydra,” Sam said. “Maybe not the smartest branch, but Hydra nonetheless. There might be computers or something that we should keep.”

Steve grabbed his shield, squared his shoulders, and put on his Captain America face. “I’m going in.”

“I probably should, too,” Tony said, flipping the face mask down and gesturing. “After you, Cap.”

Natasha let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll make sure they don’t kill each other,” she said to Pepper, who chuckled.

Less than ten minutes later, the trio reappeared; Steve was carrying a tote bag that had the BBC logo on the side that appeared to be full of electronics. “We might want to get out of here,” he said. “It’s possible a fire was started.”

“It just sort of started itself, huh?” Sam said, grinning.

“That’s the official story,” Natasha said.

“Don’t worry, there’s been an anonymous report submitted to the fire department,” Tony said. “But, uh, we should probably leave quickly.”

It took a moment to load all the wings and people into the van; Tony and Rhodey both stepped out of their suits and let them compact down to a more-transportable format, and Rhodey’s went into a biohazard bag. It still meant that they were three- or four-to-a-seat in the back, though, and Sam found himself sandwiched between Maria and Rhodey. It was probably better than Tony's situation; he had Steve's shoulders on one side and Pepper mostly sitting on his lap, with Natasha mostly on Steve's, but it still wasn't comfortable.

"I don't know where you should put your hand," Steve said at one point, "but that's probably not a good place."

"You sure?" Natasha asked, and Steve laughed uncomfortably.

"Hey," Rhodey murmured to Sam, when the initial discomfort of the drive had subsided to a general quiet. "Once you get your wings back, you wanna go flying?"

"Holy shit yes," Sam said. He looked over and saw that Rhodey was grinning, too. “Any time, man,” he said.

“We’ll find some time once we’re back,” Rhodey said.

“Sounds perfect,” Sam said, and, still smiling, rested his head back on top of Maria's.

"While we’re scheduling things," Maria said quietly, turning so her lips were against his neck by his ear, "you still owe me dinner and a movie."

"Little more than that, I think," Sam replied in the same low tone, barely audible over the noises of the vehicle. "But I've still got a thing to help Steve with."

"I know," she said. "We're both busy. But I think we can at least try."

"Yeah," Sam said.

She squeezed his hand in her lap, and he smiled.

[the end]

**Author's Note:**

> [The MOVE bombing.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> There are a lot of race-related themes in here, and I'd like to thank Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie's _Americanah_ for teaching me a lot that I didn't know about Africa and Africans living abroad, as well as the Kenya Television Network (KTN) for streaming online and giving me some idea of what people in that part of Africa, speaking English, might sound like. (Wakanda is often situated next to Kenya. Nigeria, Adichie's home country, is not.) I've made a lot of (hopefully) educated choices about what I think T'Challa might look like in the MCU, but as this story was focused on Sam and not T'Challa, I didn't necessarily get to explore all of them, or explain why I made those choices.
> 
> Also, the Black Panther BET animated TV series is amazing.


End file.
